Cloning a Hackintosh Drive

Posted 05 April 2009 - 09:53 PM

nrs250

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I have a working install of Kalyway 10.5.2.

I am trying to clone the drive so I can work with the cloned copy and have the original install as a safe backup. I have sifted through the InsanelyMac forums and have found plenty of advice on cloning drives.

I actually used drive utility to clone the MBR original.

The problem is that drive utility does not copy the Darwin bootloader. As a result I cannot boot the clone unless I

1) use the original drive
2) use an install DVD

Hit F8
Run -v rd=disk1s1

This works. But it is not as seemless as the Darwin bootloader.

I want to have a quick way to install the Darwin bootloader onto the cloned drive. I saw some advice that suggested using Clonetool (the program) to install the Darwin bootloader. That did not work.

I have been at what seems like it should be a trivial task for over 2 days now. Can anyone over me some help?

Posted 06 April 2009 - 12:31 AM

MacUser2525

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1,503 posts

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I have a working install of Kalyway 10.5.2.

I am trying to clone the drive so I can work with the cloned copy and have the original install as a safe backup. I have sifted through the InsanelyMac forums and have found plenty of advice on cloning drives.

I actually used drive utility to clone the MBR original.

The problem is that drive utility does not copy the Darwin bootloader. As a result I cannot boot the clone unless I

1) use the original drive2) use an install DVD

Hit F8Run -v rd=disk1s1

This works. But it is not as seemless as the Darwin bootloader.

I want to have a quick way to install the Darwin bootloader onto the cloned drive. I saw some advice that suggested using Clonetool (the program) to install the Darwin bootloader. That did not work.

I have been at what seems like it should be a trivial task for over 2 days now. Can anyone over me some help?

Once cloned use either the Chameleon installer to put the boot loader on the drive or you can get the PC EFI to do the same last time I used this one you needed to be able to unmount the drive to install the first you do not need to do this.

Posted 03 December 2009 - 02:24 AM

I don't understand why booting from a 3rd drive is necessary. Is this just how it is with hackintoshes, that you can't clone a bootable drive from the actual original boot drive?

Please explain.

I have done it many times from a working system you can use the diskutil restore function for this with the source as the partition to be cloned the destination as it implies where you want the files to go, once done install your boot loader of choice on the new drive/partition.

Posted 27 December 2009 - 10:38 AM

Ducatiss

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1 posts

Hi
I have built a working SL via myHack_Installer_1.0_RC4.1_r55.mpkg etc and after making a copy of the drive via SuperDuper I then install the Boot Loader via the install package. This then causes a kernel panic.

Any advice as to the best way to get a backup drive working with myHack installer?

Posted 19 January 2010 - 06:52 PM

bloom22

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I am also having trouble cloning my Hackintosh hard drive. I have built my machine according to the instructions on LifeHacker (google: life hacker snow leopard). I was using an intel iMac before, so I used SuperDuper to clone my iMac drive then used the EP45UD3P Snow Leopard.pkg to make the clone bootable on the Hackintosh. To my surprise it worked! I had my whole computer on the Hackintosh with almost no effort.
It was too good to be true however and after 6 weeks I got a kernal panic when booting.
So, I did a fresh install of Snow Leopard following the LifeHacker guide and then used migration assistant to bring over my user account. This has been working great for 3 months.

Now I want to upgrade my hard drive without having to re-install the OS.

MacUser2525, you say you were able to do this successfully using the Restore feature in Disk Utility. Did you boot off of a USB stick or use another mac?. I wonder what boot loader did you use?

Posted 20 January 2010 - 01:57 AM

Now I want to upgrade my hard drive without having to re-install the OS.

MacUser2525, you say you were able to do this successfully using the Restore feature in Disk Utility. Did you boot off of a USB stick or use another mac?. I wonder what boot loader did you use?

Any help or advice will be greatly appreciated.

I have always done it from the running system most times. I just take the new drive connect it to the header/connector part of an external USB drive while putting the drive on its anti-static bag then start it up. When OS X sees it on its startup and offers to let you initialize do it partitioning as you wish the drive to be GUID partitioned if only OS X on the drive HFS+ formatted. Then I go to the Restore option drag the existing install as the source new partition as destination uncheck erase before as it is a fresh drive then apply to let it do its thing. Once your done this then put on your boot loader of choice right now for me that is Chameleon RC3 then I reboot selecting the USB drive from the boot menu I get when I hit F12 test out the new install for an hour or two opening all my programs an using them to make sure everything is okay if it is (never had a problem yet) then I shut down machine to put the new drive in.

Posted 20 January 2010 - 11:21 AM

mr_christer

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i cloned my drive yesterday succesfully (1TB -> 1TB) and i do it almost exactly like macuser, except theat i use carbon copy cloner. it took 12 hours to clone the 900 GB of Data (it's one of this green drives) but i could even work normally during these 12 hours and the drive was still completely cloned. i find this quite amazing as i remember cloning my windows drives was always quite a hassle (booting with bootdisk into norton ghost, computer not usable during cloning...bleh)

Posted 04 February 2010 - 09:13 AM

trwoolley

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Location:Charlotte, NC

I have successfully made a bootable clone of my Snow Leopard installation using Carbon Copy Cloner as well. My source drive SL was about 200GB on my internal SATA 1TB WD, single GUID partition. The destination drive was a 500GB external USB WD, single GUID partition.

Booting required nothing other than pressing F12 from POST, selecting the cloned drive, and pressing enter. Incidentally this is also how I dual boot from POST with a third internal SATA Samsung 250GB HDD, single partition, Windows 7 formatted. All three drives show up as options at POST F12. I select the drive, enter, and instantly it proceeds to enter Darwin bootloader for SL or the Windows bootloader.

Posted 08 February 2010 - 10:35 PM

retromacg3

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I've used this with great success, no mucking around when I upgraded from a 160gb to a 320, and now to 640GB on my Optiplex 755, and my BadAxe2 based system. It's free, it's a small bootable CD, and does a bit for bit copy - slow, but accurate.

Posted 14 February 2010 - 12:40 PM

Since my last post I have removed the bootable clone from its USB/Firewire external case and installed it internally connected to the motherboard SATA connecters. It is now a bit faster.

Without changing my BIOS, I now no longer boot it from F12 at POST, instead waiting for the Darwin/Chameleon prompt to "press any key" to select drive. Essentially I suppose this at first uses the root bootloader from my main HHD as it is first in BIOS selection, then switches to the cloned drive to load Snow Leopard startup. If anyone can confirm this please advise.

Posted 21 April 2010 - 02:42 AM

Hey all, just wanted to bump this as I'm having trouble booting from a cloned drive.

Initially I thought it was down to permissions but I've tried everything I can think of but still experiencing immediate panics on boot.

I use Chameleon and cloned my 10.6.3 drive to an identical model WD. Now, I installed a Velociraptor and did a partial backup but cannot boot from it nor the other backup I made (hadn't checked it yet).

I am getting kernel panics immediately on boot and tried re-installing Chameleon to each drive but it errors (probably due to an EFI partition already present on the disk).

Posted 21 April 2010 - 07:36 AM

I can launch Chameleon off my primary then select the cloned drive and it boots fine but then I try to boot off the clone drive I get an instant kernel panic.

Chameleon is loaded and the partition is active... Tried replacing /Extra/Extensions and in particular Sleepenabler to no avail. I've also repaired permissions etc. but no go... It's got to be something simple but it's got me stumped... I can't even decipher it from panic logs...

*EDIT*

Now that I think about it, would it be the permissions for /Extra? I thought that wouldn't be it since it boots fine via Chameleon from the prim. drive but must use the /Extra/Extensions from that drive and not the clone drive.

Posted 22 April 2010 - 05:22 AM

Akshunhiro

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Thanks so much for that link BK'd.

I actually got it working prior to your link as I found that when I went to reinstall Chameleon the EFI partition became visible so I dragged the new boot file from RC4 into it and I think that's what did the trick. I wasn't sure how to access the EFI part so your link helped alot and will do so in the future.

I also ended up using smbios.plist via /Extra and also learnt alot more about how Chameleon works and how simple it's become for us to use as end users. I ended up playing around with my install (which I don't normally do but now that I have a working backup...) and got it running alot better so thanks so much for your help and contribution to the community!

Thanks to everyone who's working so hard to get this working seamlessly for us!

Posted 23 April 2010 - 02:45 AM

muchlife

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167 posts

using carbon copy cloner is the easiest way to clone for me. i choose which drive to clone, where i want to copy it to, start, and when its done i simply boot into it using boot dfe disc and reinstall the bootloader. done